the_language_of_new_media_bfandomcom-20200213-history
HCI
HCI stands for Human Computer Interface. As the name suggests it describes how the user interacts with the computer. It uses hardware (physical outputs) like the monitor, keyboard and mouse. And it uses software (internal "metaphors") like files and folders to hold and organize data. It also creates ways to manipulate the data, such as copying, renaming and deleting files. The term HCI began when the computer was only used for work, it was largely thought as a simulation of a typewriter, paintbrush and drafting ruler. It was a tool to create and then store cultural content in it's appropriate media: printed page, film, photographic print or electronic recording. During the 90s when the internet became a common tool, the computer was no longer seen as a working tool. It soon became a universal media machine, as you could go further than just creating media, you could share it with the world. Manovich says in the book that as distribution of culture becomes computer-based, we are increasingly "interfacing" to cultural data; texts, photographs, films, music and virtual environments. What this means is that we are not interfacing to a computer anymore, but a digital form culture. "Cultural Interfaces", which is what our wiki will primarily be studying, can describe the term human-computer-culture interface. This is the ways in which computers present and allows us to interact with culteral data. Culteral Interfaces include interfaces used by the designers of websites, CD-ROM and DVD titles, multimedia encyclopedias, online museums and magazines, computer games and other new media cultural objects. Computer media is a set of characters and numbers stored in a computer, however there are numerous ways to present it to a user. With any cultural language only a few possibilities are available in a given historic moment, and the rest are discovered with time. Today's digital designers and artists are creating their metaphors out of a much larger set of possibilities. Manovich asks why do cultural interfaces (web pages, CD ROM titles, computer games) look the way they do? Then his theory is that the language of cultural interfaces is largely made up by what already exists, not copying but inspired by the elements of familiar cultural forms. Modern HCI has a shorter history than the Printed Word or Cinema, it is the most recent of all three platforms, but it still has a history nonetheless. It's principles were gradually developed over a few decades (early 1950's to early 1980's) and include direct manipulation of objects on the screen, overlapping windows, iconic representation and dynamic menus. Once they appeared in commercial systems such as Xerox Star (1981), the Apple Lisa (1982) and Apple Macintosh (1984) these principles became an accepted convention for operating a computer, and made a cultural language in their own right. HCI is a general purpose tool used to manipulate any kind of data, the other two platforms are less general. HCI is a system of controls to operate a machine, the other two are cultural traditions. However combined the three create their own tradition, a cultural language that offers it's own ways to represent human memory and human experience. Manovich says media is being "liberated" from it's traditional physical storage; paper, film, stone, glassand magnetic tape. A digital designer can freely mix pages, virtual cameras, table of contents and screens, bookmarks and points of view. How HCI links into Cultural Interfa ces with the other two media platforms Cultural Interfaces use elements of general HCI such as scrollable text windows, menus, dialogue boxes and command line input. An example Manovich mentions for this is an “art collection” CD ROM, there may be a navigable 3D rendering of an art museum, but then there may be menus for the user to switch between different museum collections. Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin came up with the concept of new media “Remediation”, this is media which translates, refashions or reforms other media. The history of HCI is borrowing and reformulating other media, past and present from the printed word, film and television. “If we simply mimic the existing conventions of older cultural forms such as the printed word and cinema, we will not take advantage of all the new capacities offered by a computer.”– Lev Manovich. Modern HCI’s allow their users to perform complex actions with computer data; find information on an object, copy it, move it, change how data is displayed. In contrast, a book or a film places the user inside the fictional universe the author creates and they can’t change it. Cultural Interfaces try to mediate between these opposing approaches. If a HCI identifies that some objects can be acted on and others can’t, then hyperlinks can be hidden in a field. The field can be a 2D collage of images, a mixture of elements and textures or a single image of a space eg: a street. By clicking all over the field the user can discover that some parts are hyperlinks. One of HCI's main principles is Consistency. This means menus, icons, dialogue boxes and other elements have to stay the same in different applications. The language of Cultural Interfaces is a hybrid between the conventions of HCI and the conventions of traditional cultural forms (cinema and the printed word). Cultural Interfaces try to balance the concept of a surface without interference, with the concept of a surface as a virtual control panel. You could say that cinema and the printed word compete between themselves when it comes to HCI, as the computer screen acts as both a flat surface for text/graphics and a window into an illusionary space. “It is one thing to use a computer to control a weapon or to analyse statistical data, and it is another touse it to represent cultural memories, values and experiences.” - Lev Manovich.